Posted
by
samzenpus
on Wednesday April 14, 2010 @02:38PM
from the all-you-need-is-love-and-different-genes dept.

People who suffer from a rare genetic disorder called Williams Syndrome have a complete lack of social fear. They experience no anxiety or concerns about meeting new people or being put into any social situation, and a new study by Andreia Santos suggests that they also don't have any racial bias. From the article: "Typically, children start overtly gravitating towards their own ethnic groups from the tender age of three. Groups of people from all over the globe and all sorts of cultures show these biases. Even autistic children, who can have severe difficulties with social relationships, show signs of racial stereotypes. But Santos says that the Williams syndrome kids are the first group of humans devoid of such racial bias, although, as we’ll see, not everyone agrees."

Santos suggests that children with Williams syndrome don’t develop the same biases that their peers do, because they don’t experience social fear. Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg, who led the study, says, “There are hyper-social, very empathetic, very friendly, and do not get danger signals.” And because they’ll freely interact with anyone, they are less likely to cultivate a preference for people of their own ethnic groups. Alternatively, it could be that because they don’t fall prey to stereotypes, they’re more likely to socialise with everyone.

I think that's the cause, not because theres some difference in genes that makes you lose racial bias. They're friendly people and open to anyone. Rasism comes from not being open and friendly to people you think are somehow different.

But their complete lack of social fear is also a bad thing because not everyone are so and they might get hurt because of it. It's better than the other way more with geeky people though - I had trouble speaking to people or be open with them and it obviously got in the way of my relationships too. Somehow that changed when I was put in to social situations (with the help of beer) and got myself in to an relationship. Yes, one girl actually fell in love with me and because I acted like an open and social guy I kind of had to continue doing it. It took its time but it made an everlasting change to me, and now I can talk about things openly, be social and be friendly to people.

Maybe you don't understand. Toddlers have racial biases. Even babies just a few months old will prefer to look at a picture of someone with the same skin color as them. It's built into the way our brain works. These kids don't have that at any age. They also don't have the subconscious biases that 99% of people have, even the people that are nice to everyone and would never say, do, or even think a racist thought.

It's not only humans that show preference, it's hard-wired into every living thing with a brain. Fortunately for us, our brains are so developed that we can override this once vital but now irrelevant feature. Well at least some of us can.

It's not only humans that show preference, it's hard-wired into every living thing with a brain. Fortunately for us, our brains are so developed that we can override this once vital but now irrelevant feature. Well at least some of us can.

What I'm saying is none of these social constructs are based on science

Cutting you off right there chief. Albinoism is a lack of melanin in the skin. Melanin can be imperically measured... SCIENCE! The color of your skin, your hair color, and the shape of your eyes are not a social construct.

the group of people they use stereotypes on can just as easily create and use stereotypes as a weapon against them. And I'd go so far as to say this would be the ethical thing to do because the only way to show a bully why something is wrong is to do it to them so they can experience how it feels.

When the jock gets passed up on a job for being too blonde, too fit, too good looking, he will know how it feels and will learn "THATS WRONG!" and when this happens eventually he will learn "THAT IS BULLSHIT! RACE IS BULLSHIT!".

Frankly this rant is the kind of nonsenical garbage that I would expect to come from someone who's mommy didn't hug him enough as a child...

But until he learns that I'm fine with discriminating against him because if someone believes stereotypes should apply to others, it should apply to them as well.

So why should I hire a racist? If they believe in races over believing in genetics then they are no better than individuals who don't believe in evolution.

I don't think people are talking about imbred Billy Bob talking about how he "hates thum darkies". At least not with regard to this particular a

What would happen if there were no word for race is, you'd have some kids who would be considered "uglier" than some others, and these "ugly" kids would form bonds with other kids considered "ugly". This would be the logical conclusion if race were removed.

Actually if we didn't have the word race, we'd just have France's problem of trying to prove racial bias without using the word.

Removing words will not solve the problem. It just makes it harder to talk about it.

Actually, tests have been done that check for exactly this. Young children consistently will identify with the an illustration of a person the same skin color of them over someone who has a similar body shape to them/their parents. "Race" is artificial but ethnicity is not. It comes down to kinship, if a person has a different skin color than you, they are very likely not related, and therefore a higher risk. This appears to be built-in.

Toddlers have racial biases. Even babies just a few months old will prefer to look at a picture of someone with the same skin color as them. It's built into the way our brain works.

Is that actually nature or nurture?If an orphan baby is adopted by parents from a different race, and is surrounded by people of that race, how would he even know what his "own" race is? As long as you keep him away from mirrors, he would not even be able to tell that his face looks different, and althought he could see that he

If an orphan baby is adopted by parents from a different race, and is surrounded by people of that race, how would he even know what his "own" race is? As long as you keep him away from mirrors, he would not even be able to tell that his face looks different, and althought he could see that he has a different skin color than everyone else, as a toddler he would also have different size and proportions, a far greater difference.

I disagree -- babies prefer to look at people that look like their parents! I don't believe babies have any awareness of their own skin color. My daughter has a white father and black mother. She looks just like her mother, but prefers to hang out with people that look like her father, with which she is much more strongly bonded.

Babies prefer to look at people who look like their parents, or who look like they do. It's not because the baby has a concept of race but because the baby probably never has seen someone who looked like that before. If you are a baby surrounded by blonde white people and an asian face is shown to you then you are going to freak out if you've never seen a face like that before even if the face is beautiful.

How do babies a few months old know what their skin color is? At that age, they're probably waving their hands and arms in front of their faces, but haven't figured out they're part of them. Could it be that they react to their parents' skin color rather than their own?

Some kind of reproductive advantage, I'd guess. Here's some speculation:

1. Because babies who do not reject those who look different are less likely to survive

2. Because it's a manifestation of a trait that is important for reproductive survival later 2.1 Adults who choose to mate with those most physically like them are more likely to pass on their own genes, especially in tribal societies where members share a large portion of their genes. 2.2 Adults who don't

And this beside the fact that I live in place that is 99% white people and my own culture. Most of the racial bias seem to come from other people or established things, and babies can't have that.

You are confusing racism for racial bias. One is a social construct, the other is innate.

Racism doesn't really exist until the minority population has reached a certain threshold size. Below that, there is no tangible group by which to prejudge others, so they get treated as individuals instead of defined by their

How do you prove it's "race" that the baby thinks is beautiful? You can show a beautiful picture of anything to a baby and the baby could like it and you could show an ugly picture of anything and the baby wont like it.

So if the baby thinks people that look more like themselves are beautiful it's because they've seen more beautiful people who look like themselves in their lifetime. It has nothing to do with race and more to do with the environment of the baby and the people raising it. If you were raised as

They don't have any subconscious association between these two words and the races. That part has to be taught. But yes a baby can think that people who look similar to them are beautiful and this isn't so abnormal. It's only abnormal when they think people who look different from them can't be beautiful.

In a stone-age society it is an advantage to realize that the people from the other tribe aren't your friends because they really aren't: they want to kill you and take your food and women. Peace is a luxury of advanced societies.

I think that's the cause, not because theres some difference in genes that makes you lose racial bias. They're friendly people and open to anyone. Rasism comes from not being open and friendly to people you think are somehow different.

I believe racism is partly learned but with a genetic component that is there for purpose of promoting speciation.

I do think everyone has the gene to discriminate, but we don't all discriminate on the basis of racial stereotypes. You can look at kids and you can see that they don't all instinctually organize based on race. What happens is adults encourage them to organize based on race by telling them that this person is another race than everyone else.

If you think about it, it doesn't matter what race the bully was in school. The bully is still going to exist no matter if the bully is your race or another and it's not like bullying is any better because someone the same race as you is doing it. People who accept racial stereotypes at a young age are naive, adults who continue to cling to race have a mental disorder probably based in genetics.

It took its time but it made an everlasting change to me, and now I can talk about things openly, be social and be friendly to people. Please immediately surrender your nerd card and slashdot id... you clearly do not belong here!;-)

Think about it at the basic survival trait level I mean at the pure Darwin evolution point of view.Organisms that share the most genetic material with you have the greatest vested interest in your survival. The closer they are to you genetically the more you can trust them. Your parents and siblings are the most trust worthy, your grandparents next and so one and so on. They will also tend to look the most like you.The less someone looks like you the farther they are genetically the le

And that one was bad enough... but more importantly, what the hell does your strategy have to do with conservatives (who aren't actually what you want, actual conservatives are against changes to the status quo -which means they would be against shrinking government- you actually mean neo-liberals)? How, exactly, is a smaller government more able or likely to massively subsidize low-income families sending their children to high quality private schools (which would now basically be public schools with corpo

Williams Syndrome usually comes with a below average IQ, ALWAYS comes with connective tissue issues, including moderate to severe heart disease. It almost always comes with a reduced size, and different than "normal" facial features.

This [williams-syndrome.org] has the messy details. Highlights include:

"The majority of individuals with Williams syndrome have some type of heart or blood vessel problem. Typically, there is narrowing in the aorta (producing supravalvular aortic stenos is SVAS), or narrowing in the pulmonary arteries. There is a broad range in the degree of narrowing, ranging from trivial to severe (requiring surgical correction of the defect). Since there is an increased risk for development of blood vessel narrowing or high blood pressure over time, periodic monitoring of cardiac status is necessary. "

"Most people with Williams syndrome have some degree of intellectual handicap. Young children with Williams syndrome often experience developmental delays; milestones such as walking, talking and toilet training are often achieved somewhat later than is considered normal. Distractibility is a common problem in mid-childhood, which appears to get better as the children get older.
Older children and adults with Williams syndrome often demonstrate intellectual "strengths and weaknesses." There are some intellectual areas (such as speech, long term memory, and social skills) in which performance is quite strong, while other intellectual areas (such as fine motor and spatial relations) are significantly deficient."

There are a number of other potentially nasty medical issues, as well as the personality features that make the sydrome interesting to researchers in human behavior, psychology, and neurology.

As far as I know, the stuff specifically pertaining to "Racial bias" is completely harmless, and it is pretty fascinating that such a dramatic psychological effect can be caused by a single mutation. The "Lack of social fear" stuff isn't directly harmful; but I'm sure that "developmentally disabled child who loves and trusts everybody, and doesn't recognize social danger signals" goes badly from time to time.

However, its the cardiac, circulatory, and cognitive issues that really make this one a serious disorder.

Nobody really benefits from racism. Racism is just not a good security policy. It's not like your enemy is going to hire the mercenary that is of the opposite race to kill you. The enemy is going to research you and find out you are racist and hire the mercenary who looks like the authentic perfect ideal race for the target. And of course you'll have no way of dealing with these sorts of attacks because you naively and ignorantly trust your race.

You call it "evolution," I call you, "someone who doesn't know what 'evolution' means."Evolution is NOT an increase in the frequency of a genetic trait that we believe to be socially positive. At its most technical level, evolution is simply a change in gene frequencies within a population. Unless the article claims that the frequency of these genes is changing, then this cannot be considered 'evolution.'

Furthermore, traits like xenophobia have been evolutionarily favored over the history of our species pre

Evolution, at the most basic level, is the introduction of a mutation into a system. If the mutation is advantageous under the conditions the mutant exists, it will be selected in. If the mutation is disadvantageous or neutral under the conditions the mutant exists, it will be selected out. (In all other cases, the mutant will appear in the next X-Men comic.) Not all mutations are advantageous under all conditions, which is why (for example) you find very few red-heads in Africa compared to the far north o

My daughter has Williams Syndrome. She is 3 and has monthly EKGs, is on a calorie intense diet (because of her extremely small and underweight size). She also has severe dental problems.
all that being said, she has perfect pitch (can emulate any sound (within reason) she wants to even without hearing it right before (she can pull sounds up from long term memory). She also has a measurably more sensitive sense of hearing (i.e. you can whisper in the other room and she will hear it). She is different, and markedly so, but I cannot say that this is the direction in which all human evolution will flow.

This is a spontaneous mutation meaning it is not necessarily passed down from parents, although people with WS are 50% likely to pass it on to each child. It is a partial genetic deletion.

People with WS tend to have Elvish or Pixie features. The disorder was formerly referred to as Pixieism, and is thought (quite convincingly) to be the origin of that type of folklore: Whimsical people who are extremely talented in music, are not socially afraid of anyone and tend to have a "cocktail party personality" in that they can speak to you for hours and not actually get into an "in-depth" conversation.

My daughter may not have racial bias, but she also does not have stranger-danger... would gladly hug the nice homeless man who is yelling at god and drinking a paper bag.

My daughter . . . would gladly hug the nice homeless man who is yelling at god and drinking a paper bag.

If anyone ever needed a hug, it would probably be that guy.

I can understand that your daughter's condition wouldn't have exactly been advantageous during the time of the Huns, but today she'd probably fit in all right and would be a great person to know and be around.

OTOH, it sounds like a child with Williams' is inclined to take social risks that would make a parent break out in cold sweat.

Yes, it's sweet and wonderful that someone can be so loving. But as a Daddy, I'd rather my baby girl learn to protect herself from a world that sometimes returns hatred for love and violence for affection.

That's my job, I suppose, and realistically I can't succeed completely, because that's also unbalanced. The logical extreme of "stranger danger" is hermetic isolation, hiding fearfu

wouldn't have exactly been advantageous during the time of the Huns, but today she'd probably fit in all right and would be a great person to know and be around.

Ah... because... people are morally better now? Girls no longer get kidnapped, raped, and murdered? People no longer become under the influence of substantives which make them more dangerous? (note - I know that not all drugs make you dangerous, but some certainly do impair your judgement)

Open violence may be less, but people are just as selfish, self-serving, egotistical, and evil. We have gotten good at generally hiding it, since we mostly have everything we typically want, in western civilization anyways.

Do you know if there is such a thing as "mild" WS? After reading this post, and then reading some articles and info online about WS (including a very good NY Times article from '07 which I'll link to below), I'm beginning to think someone close to me might have this.
This individual has always seemed a bit strange socially since childhood, had learning disabilities, ADD, a slightly strange-ish facial appearance (low nasal bridge), etc. Also very socially open yet oblivious to the sorts of intonations and

until the late 1990s it was diagnosed by facial features and behavior. There is a very simple genetic test for it now (it shows up on a FISH test). Due to being in multiple WS societies/clubs I am in contact with many different levels of functioning in people with WS. I know a professional, barred, practicing lawyer who (we are 99% sure) has WS. But there is a big problem with high functioning people getting a diagnosis. WS is still considered to be "mental retardation" even though not all cases result in a below average IQ, so a professional lawyer CANNOT get diagnosed or he risks his license. We have met several people whom a geneticist would Diagnose on sight for sure, just based on the facial structure and eyes (blue with white starburst) but it is not a great idea to get saddled with what amounts to a "retarded" diagnosis, when you are high functioning.

also co-existance of Autism and WS is common, like 10-20% of subjects who have ws

I cannot say that this is the direction in which all human evolution will flow. I can only hope that this is the direction that it will flow! Your daughter is already much more enlightened than many people that will judge her as being different and abnormal. Send her to the music camps, enjoy her, love her, and protect her from those much less enlightened. As genetic "defects" go, this is one of the best ones to have. You just have to accept that in some ways she is less than average, but in other ways far

It's "evolution" only if it's a trait that increases the likelihood of survival and reproduction. Not being socially afraid of anybody might increase one's chances of reproducing, but a lack of defensiveness can also open one up to various dangers, the kinds that can remove one from the gene pool before reaching reproductive age. I don't see this trait becoming common.

Race does not have any impact on evolution. It's not a matter of fearing people who look different. That sort of shallow thinking will leave you open to booty traps because any hottie who looks good will be able to get close to you and kill you. Why? Because the enemy is going to come in a beautiful form that you'll accept and slowly poison you.

Race does not have any impact on evolution. It's not a matter of fearing people who look different. That sort of shallow thinking will leave you open to booty traps because any hottie who looks good will be able to get close to you and kill you. Why? Because the enemy is going to come in a beautiful form that you'll accept and slowly poison you.

Newsflash: most people threatening your life won't be have elaborate long-term strategies for doing so.

I agree, Williams Syndrome makes people cute, loving, gregarious, and frequently very musical. I'd call it a beneficial mutation, except that it also carries with it substantial health risks. My interest in Williams stems from my daughter, who exhibits most of the mental symptoms of Williams Syndrome, but as far as I can tell, none of the physical ones. She has no fear of walking up to strangers and hugging them (which made several men uncomfortable) or asking strange kids to play. (She was criticized by th

Not really.The trait that they lack is the one that makes children trust their parents and close family more than strangers. It is the lack of a basic skill in self preservation.Evolution is that we have gained the ability to learn that as we mature we can trust people that are different than us using judgment.

The social part of the disorder is a small piece of it. The genes that are deleted also cause problems with Elastin production, which leads to connective-tissue abnormalities and cardiovascular disease. In addition vision and auditory issues, as well as dental issues are very common.

Also no social fear means they will happily sit on santa's lap or go for a car ride with the nice man who "lost his puppy" at the park.

it is not a "terrible disorder" as people who are born with it usually (with first world modern medicine) live normal lifespan, and usually (with first world society) can have meaningful jobs and close to normal lives.

The gifts my daughter has because of her Williams Syndrome are many... but it is not all rainbows and unicorns either.

what is interesting from a science standpoint is that a simple deletion of some 26 genes of the 7th chromosome can result in extreme, but uniform social difference from neu

How is being free from racial bias a disability of any kind? Just because it's new and it fails to be part of the average human ability pool?

It's not being free from racial bias, it's being free from any sort of social fear.

For an example of why this can be a disability, consider one of these people stopping in the wrong neighbourhood to ask directions from the group of guys holding petrol cans and matches standing around a burning car.

Now we can end racism and breed everyone into one uniform Grey Race that will be the future of humankind. We will preserve diversity by creating uniformity.

If you start believing that races are pure things, and mixing them will just level things down to homogenous mush, you'll end up sleeping with your cousin and passing down all kinds of inherited disorders.

However, genetics doesn't really work like that. We are, after all, all descended from Africans in the end.

You'd figure on/., a place with what should be full intelligent people, that the liberal BS about niggers being equal to whites, would be laughed at.

Since a large community of intelligent people essentially rejects the idea that races are fundamentally unequal, what does that tell you? When reasonably intelligent people moderate any post using the term nigger in a derogatory way as flamebait, do you learn anything from that?

Prof. Terrence Deacon [wikipedia.org] pod casts his anthropology courses [berkeley.edu] from Berkeley. IIRC he suggests, when thinking about nature versus nurture debates, it's necessary to keep in mind that both nature, in terms of genetic predisposition, and nurture, in terms of the impact of environment, both play roles @ 100% each. Much like bipolar disorders and schizophrenia there must be a genetic predisposition but there must also be environmental factors. Suggesting that the gene alone is sufficient might be a bit of an overreac

If you're intrigued by this sort of thing, there's a fantastic SF short by Ted Chiang [wikipedia.org] called "Liking What You See: A Documentary". It's about the consequences and ethics of suppressing a person's ability to recognise (and thus be biased by) physical attractiveness. One of the best things I've ever read.

If you're intrigued by this sort of thing, there's a fantastic SF short by Ted Chiang called "Liking What You See: A Documentary". It's about the consequences and ethics of suppressing a person's ability to recognise (and thus be biased by) physical attractiveness.

If you're not in a reading mood, they made it into a movie called Shallow Hal.

Many species of social animals (mainly larger predators: wolves, lions, etc.. ) act threatened when confronted with a different pack, pride, colony, etc of their own kind... more so than by the presence of a different species (such as humans).

There's a damn good reason for it too. The group recognizes that other "tribe" of us wants the exact same thing we need to survive.

When I was a kid MOST of my friends were of different races so I never learned to feel any sort of bias on that level. But I learned the difference between the types of kids who would bully other kids and the type of kids who didn't and I saw the bullies as "them".

You learned the difference - but our ancestors survived because they instinctively associated "does not look like me" with "will kill and/or eat me", not necessarily "wants the exact same thing we need to survive", as the GP mentioned...

My ancestors survived by forming a tribe and killing members of the opposing tribe whether they looked like them or not. Tribe is not the same as race. Tribe is a matter of language, culture, and gene pools.

in seconds on a battlefield or a gunfight. The same genetic/neurological traits that contribute to irrational prejudice are the same ones that contribute to rational fear of others who might be dangerous to us. Since historically, false positives for avoidance weren't weeded out, you get the nut crazy fears along with the normal caution. I really don't know how you could separate out one from another. Both are largely based on behavioral and visual cues.

No, they wouldn't... they have better hearing, and frequently ADHD, which I've heard doctors describe as the inability to ignore stimuli. So, they are much more aware of their surroundings then normal people. Although they don't have instinctive fears, they can be pretty easily trained to recognize a threat. Somebody pointing a gun at you is not exactly as subtle social cue.

Pointing a gun is not, but the guy that says "Hey, come here for a second. I wanna ask you a question." and pulls the gun on you when you're off the street is a bit more subtle and just the sort of thing Wilson's syndrome people are at risk for.

This really really pisses off people who think they have no prejudice.

This test was so tedious I simply gave up when it asked me to do the whole thing over again.

I've just spend the last ten minutes sorting cropped images images of white and black americans, along with guns and coca-cola cans. Precisely how this tells anyone anything about how racist someone is escapes me. It feels like a "which anime character are you" test.

First, this is no news, I'm sure Wikipedia's article already says this, and more
I have a friend with William's Syndrome. She is really gifted in languages: I am 18, and consider myself above average with 5 languages. She speaks 9, and now she's learning Russian.

I wonder what the implications of a lack of social fear result in. Would these individuals be more likely to commit asocial activities? A lack of fear of being ridiculed might make one of them come up with a radical theory while it might make another commit a crime without thinking of the social implications.

Why would that matter?Did you know it was wrong at the time you did it, is all that should matter. If you cannot overcome a little genetic inclination you probably should be jailed or euthanized for the protection of others.

Do you actually understand the concept of statistical significance? From your use of the word 'insignificant' I doubt you're really understanding what the article is saying. Statistical significance is a different concept from what is typically meant by 'significance.'

I'm probably oversimplifying a bit, but the error bars on the Williams bar in the figure is sufficiently large to include 50% ('pure chance'). This means that based on the number of children tested, the standard deviation around the estimated mean includes the chance value--therefore, we cannot say with any confidence that the 'true' mean differs from 50% in Williams children.

In contrast, the error bar around the non-Williams children comes nowhere near 50%--that is, there is no reasonable way that resampling would produce a mean of 50%. Therefore the 'true mean' must be significantly different from 50%--and in this case, it is different in the direction of greater bias.

I agree with your post, and thank you for pointing out what statistical significance is.

Still, there is another interesting point to make.

``I'm probably oversimplifying a bit, but the error bars on the Williams bar in the figure is sufficiently large to include 50% ('pure chance'). This means that based on the number of children tested, the standard deviation around the estimated mean includes the chance value--therefore, we cannot say with any confidence that the 'true' mean differs from 50% in Williams ch

Yes, people with Williams Syndrome are at risk of being taken advantage of. And most still live at home with their parents. This is partially due to lower IQ, but mostly due to being too trusting and gullible, as you suggest.